Asian cinema megastar Donnie Yen teams up with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Yu Wang in a dramatic martial arts film directed by Peter Chan. Dragon is about a man, Liu Jin-xi, who is trying to leave behind his violent past. His previous self has been considered dead by others for some ten years, and Liu has been living a tranquil life in a small village with his wife and two children. This peaceful life is quickly turned upside down one day when two notorious thugs enter the shop that Liu works at. They assault the owner, seeking money, and Liu cannot help but fight the thugs off, killing them in the process.
At first, it appears that Liu is an unskilled fighter who essentially was lucky to survive the altercation, much less triumph. However, when inspector Xu Bai-jiu (Kaneshiro) arrives to piece events together, he discovers that Liu is not just a humble villager. He figures out that Liu is actually a false name and that this person has murdered before, and not under self-defense circumstances. Xu struggles with the idea of bringing the law to bear on Liu or simply letting him continue his renewed life. Meanwhile, Liu’s former clan, the 72 Demons, finds out that he is alive, which leads to conflict and death in Liu’s town. With the law pulling him on one side, and his former clan on the other, Liu has to figure out how to stay alive and keep his family safe.
Dragon is not a typical “martial arts” film in that there is a significant detective or mystery theme to it for the first half or so. There are also dramatic angles you don’t normally see in the genre. For the raw martial arts buff, there is not a whole lot of action here, but what is presented here is very well choreographed and enjoyable. Some of the direction used during the mystery sequences or when Xu is piecing together the crime scene with the thieves is a little too ‘modern’ for my liking, but overall the presentation, from action choreography on to the dramatic dialog scenes, are nicely done.
Something about Dragon made it difficult to really get invested in, though. It’s not any one scene or even something I can put my finger on, unfortunately. At the point where Liu’s real identity is discovered and exposed to his village, I thought the movie was going to go in one direction, but it actually took a very different path with the introduction of Yu Wang’s character. I kept hoping for a more traditional, or at least traditional in the sense of what I normally view, action-heavy piece, but the film gets bogged down in drama, family drama at that. It’s kind of like comparing The Curse of the Golden Flowers to Hero in a way — the former is so thick with (family) drama that it makes repeated viewings very difficult. Dragon felt the same way to me, it leaned more towards being a tragedy than an action movie, and while that in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s worth pointing out if you’re on the fence about watching this one.
Presentation quality on the other hand is far more agreeable and very strong. Very few to no special effects or CG are here, leaving a very realistic village as the primary environment. Technically and in terms of art direction, Dragon is a pretty film with a strong audio package as well. There are a few extra features on the Blu-ray, and these include:
-Making of Dragon (22m27s, HD) – Eight segments combine to make this making of feature that includes plenty of production and behind the scenes footage and interviews, including with Donnie Yen. The stars are featured along with some of the specific themes in the movie.
-Featurettes With Donnie Yen (5m40s, HD) – Split into three pieces, these are very short, but worth a watch as Donnie Yen is just an interesting fellow.
-“Lost In Jianghu” Music Video (5m14s, HD) – Scenes from the movie help establish this music video.
With that, let’s get to the summary…